What the Heck am I Doing? (Part 1)

Do you ever find yourself in situations where you ask yourself, “What the heck am I doing?!” Maybe I’m unique in that, I don’t know. But I recently found myself asking that very question, twice in one day.

I had been working all week with the livestock team on things like ear-tagging goats, vaccinating chickens, and checking cows for tick-borne illnesses. I am spending the week working alongside a team of local Samaritan’s Purse professionals that take care of animals that have been loaned out to people to use for breeding, to be returned with interest after 2 or 3 years. It has been a very successful program that doesn’t involve a lot of money, and the offspring that is reimbursed is then used to loan to another farmer to use for breeding. Essentially it’s exactly like getting a loan from a bank, but instead, it’s a cow, or a goat, or a pig.

It was a hot Thursday morning, and the area I am in is absolutely breath-taking. The area where the livestock loaning is going on is in the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains, the largest mountain range on the continent of Africa. Many deep crater lakes sprinkle the landscape of bright green banana and tea plantations. And it is cool, sometimes downright cold if you ask me, especially after a rainstorm. To get to where we were working required driving through Kibale National Park, a deep rainforest known for its chimpanzee, elephant, and water buffalo populations. Even along the paved road we passed a family of baboons doing a little sight-seeing of their own.

But I’m not thinking much about the landscape around me this morning. I have found myself thigh-deep in black pond muck, struggling to pull a hand fishnet to gather tilapia fish from a small, rectangular man-made fishpond. It is a project being done to help local farmers in this area. They are given a certain number of fish fry (or so baby fish are called, who knew?), along with expertise on how to construct a fish pond, and then they sign a contract saying they will reimburse the same number of fry after the fish have had time to reproduce. Those new fry will then be given to a new family who will benefit from them and then do the same thing. Part of Samaritan’s Purse ‘expertise’ is helping the people learn how to catch the fish, and how to store them without killing them with shock. So of course, as the token white guy, it was only appropriate that they ask me to hop in the water and help, pulling the net, which spans the width of the pond, across entire length of the pond. It is kind of like taking the net of a ping pong table from one side to the other. We had already using the net to scrape off black slime off the bottom for a couple hours. Now we’re using the nets to try to trap some tilapia, and, if we’re lucky, some African catfish too. But the catfish are smart, and hard to catch, according to the professionals. Tilapia must be stupid.

The sun is continually slapping me on my neck, and my triceps and quads are burning and giving out with fatigue from the constant pull of the heavy net. But boys half my age seem to be moving along without any struggle!

Needless to say, I’m miserable. Why in the world did I sign up for this? No one forced me to do this. I’m hot, sweaty, stinky, and I can barely move because I am up to my thighs in fish crap, literally. By this time, I’m hunched over the stinky water, trying to keep my chin above the water while trying to not be pulled under by the weight of the net. The problem now is that the net is so full of fish and fish muck that the fish are jumping up between our bodies and the net, trying to escape. I’m trying to see what I’m doing, but don’t want to open my eyes too much because I don’t want a fish to jump up and slap me in the eye. And I’m trying not to trip or fall down in this muck. And just when I thought I couldn’t possibly be more uncomfortable, a brave fish tries to find a way out of the net by swimming directly up my shorts….what the heck am I doing here?

We finally make it to the bank, and pick up the heavy net, requiring the effort of about 15 people, and pick through the muck and small fish to find the fish big enough to keep, all the while the fish are jumping around, spraying the black muck all over the place. Now it’s not just my legs covered in fish crap. I think we must be done, and breathe a sigh of relief to myself. That is, until the Samaritan’s Purse professional says, “Ok Cory, time to get back in and do it again!”

So we decide to do a couple more sweeps of the pond, much to my dismay. Finally, on our 4^th run, we get about 2/3 of the way down the pond, and I am literally about to collapse under fatigue. We have been doing this for over 3 hours by now. I’m trying to hide it well, and I tell myself everyone else must be hiding it too because they look like they’re fine. So I ask the guy next to me, “Alex, are you tired?”

“What?”

“Are you tired? You know, ready to stop?” I hint, trying to make myself understood. I talk fast, and have a thick American accent, which I have had to learn to tame.

“Yes, are you?”

“Absolutely!”

At this point, I am exhausted, sunburned, and feeling slightly violated from an extra friendly fish. And everyone starts to laugh at what I have just admitted. It doesn’t matter that Alex said he was tired, no one seemed to have heard that. But the white guy is tired, which apparently is funny. We have been getting sloppy with the net, and aren’t catching more fish. So everyone admits that they are tired too, and we decide to stop there.

I am happy to have helped, and I am proud, too, of the work that we have been done today. The owner of the fish pond has a new catch that he will be able to divide among his family and friends that helped him in the catch today, providing necessary protein for many in an area not known for its availability of meat. He will also be able to take some to market and sell it to make a hefty profit. Not bad for a day’s work.

I clean off some of the muck, with pond water, which almost seems pointless, and make my way back to our vehicle with the Samaritan’s Purse professional, who somehow is drier and cleaner than I am-- funny how that works. As we get in the Toyota Hilux to leave, the owner of the pond brings over a huge papaya for me. The crowd has gathered around to say goodbye.

With a huge smile on his face, he says, “Thank you Cory.”

We drive off and wave as we leave, ready to go tackle another project. As the sweet smell of that fresh papaya, mixed with the fragrant smell of fish muck, blows out the window, I finally have an answer to my question...

Cory Fish

Samaritan’s Purse

P.O. Box 21810

Kampala, UGANDA

Phone:

+256 783-594-830

Stay Alert...Drink Ugandan Coffee!

Green hills, covered in palm trees and colorful concrete houses. And I mean real hills, not small ones. It’s 75 degrees, and sunny, although there was a quick shower yesterday morning. In every direction you see these green hills, kissing the blue sky, which reciprocate the affection with spreads of fluffy white, blue-bottomed clouds.

I’m in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. The climate couldn’t be more different than the hotter, drier climate of my former village in Burkina Faso. But yet, there is a similarity. A shared resilience and joy that defiantly shines in the face of poverty, war, and disease which plagues this continent. I’m on the complete other side of Africa, in a country which allows the equator to pierce right through the middle of it (thank goodness for modern inventions like sunscreen for fair-skinned boys like me).

Uganda is surrounded by several countries that have made recent international news: Sudan, Kenya, Congo, Rwanda, among others. It is also bordered by the largest lake in Africa, Lake Victoria (quite beautiful, I must say). Uganda recently got out of its own problems, where the infamous Ugandan leader Idi Amin slaughtered 300,000 of his own people and exploited the resources. But it is peaceful now, having survived the onslaught. The country is still picking up its feet, and probably will for many years to come (not unlike our own country, still to this day working out civil rights problems that still plague us 150 years after our civil war.)

The people of Uganda speak English, which is a more difficult transition for me than one might imagine coming from a French-speaking country. I constantly have to force myself to speak my native tongue in a land far different from my own, despite the fact that the “oui”s and “ca va”s want to continually creep out of my mouth. Everything that became familiar and home to me in Burkina has been completely flipped upside-down as I now have to learn so much over again.

I am in Uganda on a 5 month internship with a Christian organization called Samaritan’s Purse. It is an organization led by Franklin Graham, a son of the famed evangelist Billy Graham that responds in America and beyond to natural and manmade disasters in order to show the love that Jesus Christ talked about showing to the poor, the hurting, the orphaned, and the hungry, instead of simply talking about it. For example, they recently responded to the earthquake in Italy, and they still are doing clean-up work based in New Orleans.

But they also do a lot of long-term international relief work after disasters happen (which is where I come in!). Samaritan’s Purse came to Uganda to set up a base to send people in to help settle the Rwandan dispute which led to the genocide of so many people (as in Hotel Rwanda). They actually accompanied the UN on its first mission in while the fighting was still going on. But after that problem was resolved, Samaritan’s Purse decided to stick around Uganda and address many of its own issues that resulted from the war in neighboring Rwanda, as well as several other needs that were not being met.

So here I am, roughly 16 years later, trying to figure out why the heck they’ve hired an army brat with a broadcasting degree to come help them in several of their projects in Uganda. One of the first things I assist on is a project they do to support local orphanages.

Samaritan’s Purse gives training, and occasionally materials, to over 40 orphanages in the capital. They cover things like fire safety, first aid, sports programs, and many other things that our American government does, but not every other country does. I was visiting an orphanage right outside of Kampala this morning with Tred, my co-partner throughout these next few months from Wales, to aid a couple local men that do sports programs with the orphans and relate it to a Biblical lesson and how it can be applied to the kids lives. Along the road outside of town, I passed a billboard which read in bright red letters “STAY ALERT…DRINK UGANDA COFFEE!” with a background of fresh coffee beans. And I thought to myself, “What a great idea—a public service announcement, advertisement, and national identity awareness all wrapped into one!”

Now, I have to attest to this amazing Uganda coffee, and admit that it is pretty darn good (sorry Dad, yours is still good too). One of the toughest things about living in Burkina Faso for me was not being able to have the occasional comfort cup of coffee.

I have a long road ahead of me, and will pass many billboards and speedbumps along this road. And no doubt, I will have many “coffee” breaks along the way. But hopefully I will learn something new. There is a comfort here that carries over from Burkina Faso. Despite the many differences, there are many similarities. Most people of Burkina are Muslim; most people of Uganda are Christian. Uganda is a little more developed than Burkina. But there is that shared joy that makes me instantly feel at home, despite me being an obvious stranger.

There’s a saying for us Caucasians, which says, “If you want to know how white you are, go to Africa.” And let me say, I feel as white as ever. But I know God has called me to this place, and I’ve got many adventures ahead of me. Hopefully I will be able to stay much longer than my initial 5 month assignment. I will assist with many projects, including UN food distribution to those affected by drought, AIDS testing, livestock loaning, and many others. But I know that with my limited knowledge, I will probably learn much more than I will be able to ever help others. But God has given me the strength and desire to follow this amazing dream of mine. And for that, I am thankful. But let’s be honest, I’m also thankful home-grown coffee!

Cory